Week 6 - Journals and Diaries
By nature, I'm very pragmatic, not introspective - I don't keep a journal. I don't remember keeping a childhood diary, although I probably was given one at some point. I doubt it had many entries, and it wasn't anything I cared about or wanted to keep. That all changed on January 1st, 1988.
While visiting my sister who was living in Montrose, Colorado, my husband Bill had a massive brain hemorrhage. This was THE definitive moment in my life - nothing was the same afterwards. It took quite awhile for me to adjust to the new normal.
Sometime within the first few weeks, I purchased a plain brown book and started keeping a journal of his recovery. To start it off, I went back in time to New Years and recorded my memories of our initial trip to the ER, the transfer to a regional hospital and eventual air evac to Shands hospital at the University of Florida. The journal ends on June 5th, the day of his release from the Brain Injury Recovery Center at Sand Lake hospital in Orlando, Florida.
Until this prompt about journals and diaries, I hadn't opened the journal in years. The journal documented my feelings about his care - the ups and down. This was such a painful period in my life. To this day thinking about his brain injury still brings me to tears.
What isn't in the journal is my dispair at losing my lover and becoming a caretaker to the remnants of the man that remained. It was much, much later that I realized that Bill would never again be the man I married; that he was never going to return to "normal".
I spent many months in therapy trying to come to terms with the fact I couldn't take care of him. It took years to come to terms with our divorce and life without him.
While working on my genealogy, I came across an obituary for Edgar Chambers, the husband of my great grand aunt Etta McDowell. The obituary stated Edgar sustained a brain injury due to heat stroke. Buried between the lines was the fact his young wife had a new baby and couldn't care for him. He was sent back east to stay with friends. I understood the pain and heartbreak my Aunt Etta went through. I feel like I walked a short while in her shoes.
While visiting my sister who was living in Montrose, Colorado, my husband Bill had a massive brain hemorrhage. This was THE definitive moment in my life - nothing was the same afterwards. It took quite awhile for me to adjust to the new normal.
Sometime within the first few weeks, I purchased a plain brown book and started keeping a journal of his recovery. To start it off, I went back in time to New Years and recorded my memories of our initial trip to the ER, the transfer to a regional hospital and eventual air evac to Shands hospital at the University of Florida. The journal ends on June 5th, the day of his release from the Brain Injury Recovery Center at Sand Lake hospital in Orlando, Florida.
Until this prompt about journals and diaries, I hadn't opened the journal in years. The journal documented my feelings about his care - the ups and down. This was such a painful period in my life. To this day thinking about his brain injury still brings me to tears.
What isn't in the journal is my dispair at losing my lover and becoming a caretaker to the remnants of the man that remained. It was much, much later that I realized that Bill would never again be the man I married; that he was never going to return to "normal".
I spent many months in therapy trying to come to terms with the fact I couldn't take care of him. It took years to come to terms with our divorce and life without him.
While working on my genealogy, I came across an obituary for Edgar Chambers, the husband of my great grand aunt Etta McDowell. The obituary stated Edgar sustained a brain injury due to heat stroke. Buried between the lines was the fact his young wife had a new baby and couldn't care for him. He was sent back east to stay with friends. I understood the pain and heartbreak my Aunt Etta went through. I feel like I walked a short while in her shoes.
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